With a-Hey, Ho, the Wind and the Rain

Alright, it was another cold, rainy day. It's actually felt a bit like English weather--rainy, sunny, warm, and frigid, all in one day. We began our morning by finishing up a few chores that were left from yesterday. I mowed a few pathways, Patrick and Colleen planted a few beds, and Graham thinned/weeded radishes. After that, it was on to cleaning and sanitizing the chicken coop. It is going to be used for hanging and drying garlic, so it needs to be spotless and sterile. That's quite the chore, let me tell you. First, we had to shovel out four to six inches of hay that was covered in chicken feces. This was loaded into the wheel barrow and dumped in the compost pile. Then Graham and I swept the floor as best we could. After that, one of us hosed down the floor and the other person scrubbed with a push-broom. Finally, we had to go back again and spray down the cracks between the floorboards and scrape them out with a backhoe. This took from about 10:30 in the morning until about 5:15 in the evening, with an hour for lunch in there. Here's what it looked like after today's cleaning:


It's still not perfect, but you wouldn't believe how much of an improvement this is. I could have taken a "before" shot, but I don't think anyone would want to look at that anyway. In any case, we still have a little more left to do tomorrow. After it dries out over night, we're going to sweep the floor again. Then we'll do another quick hose-down and scrub with the push broom. Finally, we'll use a 10% hydrogen peroxide solution to sanitize everything. It's a lot of work, but at least we'll have a good storage space for the garlic we'll be harvesting this week.

If you're curious about what everyone looks like, here's me, Graham, Colleen and Patrick (from left to right):



Also, I took some pictures of the hops that Brian and Rebecca are growing on-site. They have over 10 varieties of hops growing, including some crosses they made themselves:



Finally, here's some more of Brian's Celtic artwork. This is the coop for the laying hens (not the one we cleaned out today, this one is still very much in use by chickens):